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Who Built the Pyramids? (2003)
- DrScump 9y ago(2003)
- dang 9y agoThanks! Added.
- amriksohata 9y agoI wish there would be more research done on the pyramids and the number 432
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- boomlinde 9y agoWhat's the connection there? I asked a friend just the other day if he thought the pyramid numerology kooks and the "cosmic A432" kooks had ever joined forces. Would love to watch a 50 minute youtube video of a guy rambling incoherently about it into a bad microphone.
- amriksohata 9y agoThey pyramids 1/43200 ratio is well documented, the same ratio and number is seen as very important in many Vedic texts and Vedic structures
- boomlinde 9y ago> They pyramids 1/43200 ratio is well documented Interesting. As I suspected, the only thing I can find is kooks playing numberwang to "roughly" arrive at 43200 by connecting various geometric properties of the pyramids to various measurements in cubits, meters, miles, seconds. It's an equation where you decide the units and operators, and also get to throw in whatever factors that seem significant to you, and at every stage of the equation you get to choose whether to dismiss the error of the number you "approximately" arrived at or not, so of course you'll find whatever number you want if you look hard enough.
- perl4ever 9y agoPresenting evidence of people who worked on project [X] and were not in group [A] is not the same thing as showing that group [A] did not work on project [X]. Surely that's elementary?
- pluma 9y agoThe claim isn't that slaves weren't involved, the claim is that the common knowledge that it was all slaves is wrong. It was widely believed the pyramids were a massive slave operation because obviously people had to be forced to work on something of that scale and obviously nobody would subject themselves to something this arduous freely. Imagining how they were built conjures up images of Egyptian guards whipping slaves who drag massive slabs in the scorching heat. But new evidence suggests not only wasn't everybody who worked on it a slave, there's even good reason to believe that slaves didn't play any bigger role than in the society at the time in general.
- perl4ever 9y agoThe claim isn't that slaves weren't involved? The very first thing you see when loading the page is "Who Built the Pyramids? Not slaves.". Later on, the article says (of Lehner): "He has found the city of the pyramid builders. They were not slaves." Near the end, it says "Slaves or not, as the last season of his dig began, Lehner still did not know where all the workers slept." So I think my original comment was salient and reacting to how the article actually presented things. It makes clear statements that slaves weren't involved. Then it leaves the possibility open at the end. It's common in many articles to overstate a claim in the beginning to grab readers, and I don't care for it.
- pluma 9y agoSurely "slaves built the pyramids" implies that at least the majority of people involved were slaves. The article inverses that simplified statement, implying the same caveat: at least the majority of people involved weren't slaves (though some might have been). If slaves were present in the society, it's absurd to interpret a blanket statement like "not slaves (built the pyramids)" to imply no slaves were involved, especially when it's a direct response to the blanket statements "the pyramids were built by slaves" (which noone would take to mean that no non-slaves were present anywhere near the construction site -- it's a given that someone would need to oversee the slaves somehow). But we're literally arguing over semantics. Unless you assume that all generalisations are always intended to be understood 100% literally and that archeologists would want to express 100% confidence in knowing exactly what group in society each person involved in a construction project thousands of years ago belonged to, there really isn't anything worth arguing over. General ignorance has it that the pyramids were built almost entirely by slaves. This article claims that is not the case. Everything else is just fluff to make for a better read.
- ggm 9y agohttps://allpoetry.com/A-Worker-Reads-History https://allpoetry.com/A-Worker-Reads-History
- HenryBemis 9y agoThinking of the economics behind this feat, if these were not slaves, but paid employees, I would assume that a whole ecosystem would exist nearby. These people would need to be housed, buy food with their salaries (stores/markets), send kids to 'school'. A city would need to have been developed to accommodate that population. Also, if they were slaves they wouldn't have been given the luxury of a proper burial/cremation, so somewhere nearby there should be mass graves. I am not an archeologist, I am just trying to think with modern days analogies.
- lucozade 9y agoThe article helpfully addresses a lot of this. The majority of the article talks about the town that they excavated that existed for precisely this reason. The evidence strongly suggests that the residents were very well looked after. They also speculate that the town was populated as a consequence of a form of feudal duty called bak. This feudalism is documented but isn't known to have been used specifically to build the great pyramids (though it seems likely). On the assumption that this is true, the lack of family accommodation etc is entirely plausible: the workers are seconded to the town for periods rather than live there full time. I would really recommend reading the article, even if you're not an archaeologist. It's very interesting what you can learn from the evidence.
- pjmlp 9y agoYep, that is why I love reading any kind of document that has managed to survive to our days.
- Steve44 9y agoAn acquaintance works in in the oil industry and they can have tens of thousands of people working on projects costing tens of billions. This looks like a similar scenario.
- ljf 9y agoOK I know the city has encroached more recently - but the pyramids aren't 'in the middle of the desert with nothing around for miles' - https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/aerial-view-of-pyramids-of-giza-egypt-density.jpg?w=800&h=527 https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/aerial-vie... and http://www.geographylists.com/egypt_sphinx_backside http://www.geographylists.com/egypt_sphinx_backside
- qiqitori 9y agoI thought it was ancient aliens...
- lucozade 9y agoApparently, so did Lehner in his younger days. Fortunately, he realised that evidence is better than ignorant speculation and, as a consequence, has done quite a lot for our understanding of the period and the great pyramids in particular.
- odammit 9y agoI’m pretty sure they were making a Giorgio joke.
- trott 9y agoI remember a humoristic Soviet daily wall calendar that said: "And then we'll destroy the cranes, and the whole world will wonder how we built these pyramids"
- vasilipupkin 9y agoThis article is from 2003. Did subsequent research confirm these findings ?
- LoSboccacc 9y agoIt is one of those topics that crop up every now and then. What emerges from the picture is that few of the low skilled worker at the construction site where slaves in the way we picture slavery today with many in a social situation more akin to serfdom. At what point slavery becomes serfdom is more a matter of semantic. Then again there were both actual slaves, i.e. prisoner and spoil of wars and skilled craftmen working at the decorations, detailing etc, because building a pyramid was not just the "moving rocks" parts. Attempting to reduce something that complex to a single slave vs non slave structure is reductive at best, especially in a society with a caste system such as the Ancient Egyptian. Just think about the ideograms, those were written under the direction of the religious caste, even if indirectly.
- billfruit 9y agoAnother enduring mystery, why doesn't the Bible mention the Pyramids?
- InitialLastName 9y agoBecause those sections of the Bible were fabricated by neighboring Canaanite herder tribes in the 9th century BC as justification for their unification. Why would they know what Egypt was like?
- dschn_dstryr 9y agoThere is no historic evidence for the jews ever being in egypt.
- WillReplyfFood 9y agoThere is a lot of evidence for large parts of the early bible stories beeing copyied from the egyption sun god movement.
- olavk 9y agoNot really, no. It has been speculated that Akhenatens elevation of Aten above other Gods inspired the monotheism of Moses. But AFAIK this is pure speculation without a shred of evidence. Moses might not even be historical anyway, and the chronology is off. It is much more likely the later monotheism was inspired by Persian religion.
- cholantesh 9y ago>monotheism of Moses Was Moses a monotheist, though? I thought that at the time depicted in the Pentateuch, the Israelites were henotheists - they believed that there were many gods but that YHWH was the only one worthy of worship.
- olavk 9y ago
- alphydan 9y agoUnrelated, but I really enjoyed this guy's hands on approach to moving 20 ton blocks by himself, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5pZ7uR6v8c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5pZ7uR6v8c It goes to show that wood, levers and clever engineering could have achieved amazing construction feats.
- peterwwillis 9y agoAn article from Mark Lehner, written for the internet in 1997, about bread pots: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/newsflash/newsflash970203.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/newsflash/newsflash9702...
- wickedlogic 9y agoHaven't we well established that water was used? ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dup19cX6yXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dup19cX6yXo
- rb808 9y agoduh, anyone who watches Teen Titans Go knows that aliens built the pyramid with the help of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster.
- tastythrowaway 9y agowas it not aliens?
- gt_ 9y agoGreat article! This Lehner guy is an absolute inspiration.